Clownish Headline from CNN

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Remember when CNN hired James Earl Jones as the voice for its identifier that it played during commercial breaks?

“This is CNN,” he said in that deep, sonorous voice of his.

Jones sounded so commanding, so authoritative, so reliable, so trustworthy. You just had to stay tuned to the network.

These days, CNN would do better to hire Krusty the Clown from The Simpsons to state the identifier for the network during commercial breaks. He’d be perfect: “Hey boys and girls, this is CNN. A few people watch us, but nobody trusts us!”

CNN demonstrated its unreliability with a headline for a story about Joseph’s Tomb being set on fire in the West Bank on Thursday. In a display of callous indifference for religious freedom and tolerance, a group of Palestinians torched the building. USA Today covered the story as follows:

Palestinians late Thursday set fire to a religious site in the West Bank revered by some Jews as the tomb of biblical patriarch Joseph.

In a separate incident on Friday, a Palestinian impersonating a journalist stabbed an Israeli solider.

The attacks came as the militant group Hamas called for a “day of rage” against Israel to begin following afternoon prayers.

Here is CNN’s headline for the story:

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OK. So Joseph’s Tomb just “caught fire.” Really? How? Was it an “electrical fire?” like the one that the Palestinian Authority says took place at Charbel Monastery in Bethlehem a while back? There have been a lot of those recently.

Or did different parts of the tomb’s stone structure magically rub themselves together and cause some fabric to erupt in flames? Was it one of those instances of spontaneous combustion we read about in the supermarket tabloids?

No, Joseph’s Tomb did not “catch fire.” Palestinians set it on fire. They torched it. They set it ablaze. They initiated its combustion. It did not “catch” fire. It did not spontaneously combust.

Just to get a sense of CNN’s ineptitude, take a look at this Tweet from Israeli commentator Avi Mayer, who compares CNN’s take on the fire at Joseph’s Tomb with another fire presumably set by Jews in the West Bank in January.

Compare and contrast: Mosque torched – "radical Israeli settlers" blamed, Jewish holy site torched — "catches fire." pic.twitter.com/UJwHr1tQcV

— Avi Mayer (@AviMayer) October 16, 2015

CNN has no problem pointing the finger of blame at Jews in a fire at a Mosque that took place in January, but a few months later, when there’s no doubt that Palestinian Muslims set Joseph’s Tomb on fire, CNN does everything it has to obscure responsibility for the fire.

It’s a disgusting and dishonest double standard.

Update12:30 p.m.: After being contacted by CAMERA, CNN has changed the headline to report that the tomb has been “set ablaze.”